Crowd funding In Clinical Research(Part I)

Crowd-funding
is gearing significance or can say popularity in the field of
clinical research or medical research as a whole.

The
crowd funding phenomenon was born about a decade ago, inspired by
artists to finance independent films and by charities to keep
struggling nonprofits afloat. Venture capitalists and entrepreneurs
took the leap to launch start-up businesses. Very recently, a
growing number of scientists have turned to crowdfunding as a
supplement to government grants.

So
how would a researcher start at it?

He
pr she should start by selecting a website. But the confusion is that
there are more than 800 crowdfunding websites, but only a few are
eager for funding scientific research. Some of the sites focus mainly
on specific diseases or new drugs, while others opt for young
scientists. A number of sites invite clinical trials which have
regulatory approval but no capital. The donations might be of any
size, when others tend to fund more expensive clinical trials.

The
mainstream
crowdfunding hubs Indiegogo and
Kickstarter had some limited success with financing science
projects,but
it's believable
that
a separate platform is necessary for medical
research.

Indiegogo
and
Kickstarter were designed for creative artists, and hence
worked well for the creative processes.

Perhaps
crucially, Luan and co-founder Cindy Wu are young scientists
themselves - former University of Washington graduate students .

After
a poll the professors found that everyone was irritated with the
obstacles associated with the highly competitive funding process
which complies 80% of rejected proposals. The irony is that the
researcher spends 12 weeks a year writing proposals, and the average
age of a grant recipient in biomedicine is 42.

Could
crowdfunding transform scientific research?

Theoretically
crowdfunding could be a viable model for gearing up funding and media
attention for small and early stage ideas and high-risk proposals
that the current grant systems offered by many institutions.

It's
absolute that although he sees the crowd funding potential have a
much bigger and more transforming impact on medical research.

That was
the original platform for value for scientists of all types and
backgrounds. But, nowadays, the situation has become so extreme that
projects and grants that would fund are no longer getting the
backing they actually deserve.

Basically
we are talking about the slack and devastation caused by the
sequester and budget cuts. The same goes the entire history of
federally funded science.

Generally
there is a long way to go before crowdfunding can actually match the
scale of conventionally funded medical research.

Crowdfunding
for medical research has some limitations, though. It lacks the
traditional government grants and bears new liabilities. In practice
there are very few protections to ensure that donations are spent for
the said purposes and that guarantee donor dollars are going to the
benefit of science. In case of government grants, university admins
carefully review and sign off on applications to ensure the terms of
the award can be honored.

The main issue about
crowdfunded research is the lack of traditional peer review. It’s
extremely difficult to secure the baseline sponsoring that
researchers count on, and there is certainly the eagerness of trying
creative, alternative sources of funding. The peer review is a good
feature of government grants. With clinical research, the government
funding infrastructure comes with some basic oversights, safety
concerns , internal checks and balances, and continuous follow-up by
review boards.

In our next article we
would be continuing with the other aspects of Crowdfunding. We would
brief about how scientific crowdfunding is different from
crowdfunding creative objects. Can Crowdfunding actually transform
the scientific research or the clinical research in whole.

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